A Swamp Full of Dollars

by Michael Peel

Published 2009 by I.B. Tauris pp 240 ISBN 9781848858404

Nigeria is a country where petroleum prices and polio are both booming, where small villages challenge giant oil companies and scooter-drivers run their own mini-state. The oil-rich Delta region at the heart of it all is, as Michael Peel shows us, a troublespot as hot as the local pepper soup. Through a host of characters, from the prostitutes of Nigeria's Port Harcourt to the Area Boys of Lagos, from the militants in their swamp forest hideouts to the oil company executives in London, Peel tells the story of this extraordinary country, which grows ever more wild and lawless by the day as its crude oil pumps through our cities.

As the price of oil gyrates on international markets and the world's hunt for new reserves becomes ever more desperate, Nigeria's tale is a dark warning of how unbridled plunder eventually rebounds on those who have done the taking. Blending vivid reportage, history and investigative journalism, A Swamp Full of Dollars takes us under the skin of a country locked in a deadly embrace with big oil.

Michael Peel is currently Middle East correspondent for the Financial Times, having previously been its West Africa correspondent. He has contributed articles on Africa to the London Review of Books and Prospect magazine. In 2009, his book A Swamp Full of Dollars was shortlisted by the Guardian First Book Award.